Tales of Discopants: Part 1 "The Childhood Years"

A Tales of Graces f Let's Play!

(The following account contains spoilers up to the end of chapter 1. Highlight to read.)

Today I found a robot girl, who I think fell off that big black streak in the sky that nobody ever talks about. She can’t remember anything, but she can punch things to death and looks a bit like Black Rock Shooter! We named the robot girl Sophie.

We decided to take her home and I asked Dad if I could keep her. He wants to sell her to scientists or something. Cheria keeps having asthma attacks, and Hubert is still whining about everything. I overheard Dad and Mom plotting to ship me off to the military academy! I’m so excited, that’s exactly what I’ve always wanted!

The prince is staying with us, I’m not sure why, but we decided it would be fun to create an incident of national security and run off to have some fun. Then the prince’s former bodyguard tried to kill us and we all fell off a cliff. It was my first near death experience! It wasn’t as cool as people make them out to be.

Somehow we all lived, and to memorialize it we carved our name into the big ass tree. But since none of us can spell very well, and carving a tree is hard, our names look like worm holes.

Then I was grounded and the Prince went home and Dad took Hubert to the city with him.

So Sophie and I snuck off to the capital to visit Prince Richard! No one seems to care why kids are traveling by themselves. Except the turtle drivers, they hate children.

The capital is an interesting place, they have this huge spire of green crystal which is probably terribly important for some reason. We invited Richard out for a tour and ran into Dad and Hubert. Dad seems to have given up on punishing me, right now anyway. Hubert seems to be depressed for some reason, so we decided to take him on a midnight tour of the castle!

Everything’s gone horribly wrong. Richard was late, we went into the tunnels alone. There were monsters, but heck there are monsters everywhere anyway. We were attacked by a giant demon monster, which looked like it’d hurt Richard. It attacked everyone and I was stabbed multiple times. Second near death experience sucked way worse than the first. Sophie turned into a weapon of mass destruction and nuked the bad thing. I woke up at home, and they told me Sophie was dead but didn’t show me her lifeless corpse so I find that odd.

It turned out Dad wasn’t sending me to military school, he sold my brother for smack. Or something, he didn’t really tell me but I can only assume my little brother is some sick nobleman’s boy toy now. So I snuck out and left home. Cheria tried to stop me and I told her to shove off, although I’m glad she’s alive and everything.

I’m never talking to my father again! It’s not like he’ll make the hour long ferry ride to fetch his underage son back from the academy! Who’s the Lhant heir now, huh? Ha ha ha.

(End Plot Spoilers)

JRPGS, at least the good ones, are my warm fuzzy afternoon gaming desire. Sometimes I just want to sit down and watch candy colored anime kids run around and talk about silly things while hitting monsters over the head with sticks. They get written off by a lot of people for just that sorta atheistic, but it takes me back to playing Lunar and stuff.

Graces f is scratching that itch hard. Sooo goood.

I appreciate that the tutorial for Tales of Graces f is baked into the ongoing plot set up. At first I thought the tip boxes after battle were repeating information, but then I realized it was all new mechanics. There’s a lot to remember and a lot of random terms being thrown around but the gist of it is “hit x button a lot and hold the stick a certain direction to pull off attack strings.” The leveling up system is nice. Your skill points are built up on titles, and once something is learned it’s permanent. So after awhile I’d check my stats screen and see lists of permanent stat increases. I dig that.

The world doesn’t seem very large, but I appreciate no random encounters and I keep jumping into fights all over the place to learn new skills and that stuff.

I can’t put the game down. Ha!

(I’m already about 15 hours past this part, but I have to break up these posts to not be overwhelming.)

Sounds like a plan.

Had to read the spoilers too.

:) Sounds nice. 2 parts ridiculous, 1 part half-serious. But not.. you know... ever replacing the story with random events that keep getting interrupted by even more random boss-fights. (Eternal Sonata, looking at you..).

just read what you just wrote...

...it's insanely funny and I really liked it. Sophie's arrival reminds me of Meredy Tales of Eternia, except Meredy is not an android/robot/cyborg but an alien from Celestia. So far, I'm not looking on any Tales of Graces F videos on Youtube just to not spoil too much of the surprises this game has in store for me and I'm still waiting for my copy of this game...